Deep Within the Drift
by TheLawlessLady
Summary: The Kaiju War is upon us, and we're no longer winning. The Pan Pacific Defense Corps is losing Jaegers, Rangers, funding... even hope. I'm part of the last line of defense against the Kaiju, and we're barely hanging on. The race to turn things around is desperate, and I'm struggling to change things. We all are. We need something to give us our hope back. Eventual MakoXRaleigh!
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own any ideas or characters related to the Pacific Rim franchise. Only new concepts and characters are mineee.

* * *

I never used to have dreams, but now I can't escape them. Sometimes they're realistic, sometimes they're outlandish, some are good, sometimes they even give me deja vu half way through the day, but mostly they're one of the few things that can still terrify me. They started out of nowhere on the night of my twentieth birthday after a full day of celebrating. I woke up the next day, returned to my duties as per usual, and halfway through the day, something triggered the memories of the dream. Stopped me dead in my tracks in the middle of a hallway. But that was well over a year ago, so I'm used to all the strange happenings that accompany dreams now. I guess that I'm just adaptable like that.

* * *

September 2nd, 2024

There's a lot of commotion today while I'm working on a new Jaeger engine concept. It's not the usual hustle and bustle, it's not even the kind of panicked excitement that courses through the Hong Kong Shatterdome when a Kaiju signature pops up out of the Breach. No, this is a wild whisper that manages to steal my attention, because it's telling me that our time is dwindling, and that I'm not working fast enough. I need to get my act together, because we need a new engine and new weapons system. We need them so that any new Jaegers could outlast and out maneuver a level IV Kaiju, but I cannot even build a functioning engine before the UN decides to cut us off entirely. I won't be dreaming or sleeping much while more and more Kaijus and the last of the Rangers continue to battle. I need to be doing better. Even when Stacker finds time to visit me, and sees the look on my face, he can't bring himself to tell me that I'm doing okay. He needs my best work and I'm not giving it.

Stacks visits me deep into the night. I know he can't sleep either.

"Mako, may I come in?

"Of course," I reply distractedly. I'm deep into a book about thermonuclear fusion, as if it can tell me something I don't already know or what I'm missing.

"I think you need a break. You need a chance to regroup, refocus." Upon seeing the scowl on my face, he quickly adds, "You should practice. In the simulator. It's been months since you went in."

I look up from my textbook and shrug noncommittally. "I don't want to lose what focus I still have."

"Mako! You haven't seen a God dammed Jaeger in two months, you haven't done a sim in even longer, and you've hardly been doing any combat training either. I strongly believe that it would do you well to see this problem from another angle. An inside angle."

When I did not respond, he began to retreat, but not without one last remark.

"You have twenty-four hours to log a simulated drop in a Jaeger, Mako."

I want to yell frustratedly after the Marshall, but the heavy door to my lab is already swinging shut. I know he feels the pressure. We all do. I have yearned to be a Ranger for many years, to protect the planet that I love, to avenge my family, but Stacker refuses to let me. My place is in my lab, designing tech while I still can. The financial cutbacks to the PPDC are slowly but surely crippling us, and there are rumors that not only is our time on Earth rapidly shortening, but that soon Shatterdomes worldwide will be shut down to save money for the Kaiju Walls.

That night, I fall asleep as the sun is rising outside of our stronghold. I read until I can't see straight, until my mind is just equations and theories and possible real life implications. I read until I forget we are all in the midst of a terrifying apocalypse. I read until I fall asleep, and then I dream about every terrible thing there is out there.

* * *

September 3rd, 2024

I make my way to the simulation room late the next evening, hours after dinner. People are scarce, and my twenty-four hour time limit is right around the corner. As I punch in my security passcode on the door, my hand doesn't tremble like it did the first time I prepared to enter a sim. It has been a long two years. While I once experienced fear and trepidation, I now feel readiness and excitement. The excitement is smothered under a layer of calm as I say good night to the last technician in the simulation room. I've been in enough sims, and had a part in designing enough of this tech, that they leave me here without a second thought. I doubt that the analysts and technicians still at this post get many visitors. I am easily one of the last people on Earth still able to train but not pilot.

The steps to prepare all necessary machinery for the simulation bay I will be using are very familiar, and I do not hesitate to climb into the chair and put the helmet on. I recline the chair back, and press one last button.

The simulated moment of Drift is quickly upstaged by the Neural Handshake. As my Jaeger roars to life, I feel the different parts of me purr with it. The warrior and the scientist in me are both exhilarated about piloting a Jaeger, and I must quickly stomp down the feelings rising inside me. They will distract me from my objective, because I am only doing this drop to learn how I can better improve the performance of at least one of these mechs. But, I tell myself, to fully understand where I have gone astray, I should experience everything this Jaeger has to offer. Just one last time, I will have this moment of pure passion, and then I will return to my duties and do my part to save this world.

Most pilots know what Kaiju they are facing before they even have a drivesuit on, but today I have no idea what the computer will give me in my fifty-first drop. I have no idea what I'm getting myself into, but I cherish every part of this, even the uncertainty. We all are used to uncertainty these days. I wade through the relatively shallow waters that my mech was deposited in. There are traces of Kaiju Blue everywhere, making the water murky and extremely foul. I turn my back to the ocean momentarily to see which city I am protecting. The massive wall is completed and marked in a language I do not understand but am familiar with. Manila is hidden behind that wall, approximately four miles of ocean away from my current position. As I turn back, I begin to second guess my decision to come this far out to sea, but I refuse to make the deadly mistake of not trusting myself. I start flipping through the different sensors my Jaeger's AI and the LOCCENT Mission Control have available in this simulation, and realize that this will be the most life-like drop I have ever done. Each and every sensor is available, picking up the movements of the tides and fish in the ocean I stand reactor deep in. When first one, and then another, and then all of the sensors start going off, I lock myself into a fighting stance and brace for impact. There is a rather nasty level IV Kaiju headed straight for me, and I'm going to send it back to the hole in the universe from which it came.

Stacker Pentecost is ripping the helmet off of me as my consciousness returns from the Drift and into my body. From the sweat dripping down his face to the knife in his hand, I know that something has gone wrong, but I can't place what. My mind is fuzzy, but focused on two things: where I can give the Rangers an advantage, and my perfect, undefeated record in simulated drops. Stacker begins to look worried, and I realize it's because am I not responding to him and that he is holding something in his hand.

"Your braid... It, uh, got caught in the the circuitry in the back of the helmet. It was starting to smoke when I found you. I had to cut it off to get you out. I'm sorry, Mako..."

He looked upset, because I had been following his order, and it had put me very much in danger. He gathered me into his arms and I let him hold me. I was stroking my braid detachedly when I whispered, "I can fix our Jaegers. I can make them stronger."

* * *

AN: This is my very first published story, so I appreciate any reads and/or reviews, and especially constructive criticism! This story will follow the general plot of the Pacific Rim storyline, but with my own ideas added in. Thanks, lovelies!


	2. Chapter 2

September 5, 2024

It's cold as balls in Anchorage. Oh yeah, that's a given, but when you're on top of an Anti-Kaiju Wall in Anchorage, Alaska, you could freeze to death just as easily as fall to your death or weld your own arm to a pylon. It's cold, it's dangerous, and not one damn person gives even a single shit about where or how you are. That's my favorite part. No other annoying and disgusting men around, just me and as far as my eyes can see. That's about as good as it gets these days. The top of this Wall either gets me dead or gets me freedom and ration cards, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

When I finally found my way to a Wall in early 2021, I was in Manila. And then off to Russia, and then Australia, and then to San Francisco and probably another half dozen cities or countries after that. Somehow, I've ended up on one of the most hellish Walls out there, but now she's my favorite. Anchorage's crazy weather makes even a good day a challenge to build in, and sometimes we go for days at a time without being able to go outside. I do love a good challenge still, and ol' Annie's Wall will surely be a challenge for months to come at this rate. Cold, peaceful, challenging months with just me and all my tools. I'm sure that sounds real lonely to most people, but I chose this, and now people don't mess with or think about me. I bet I could count on one heavily gloved hand how many souls out there would do either of those things. My situation does sound kind of lame when I put it that way, but I chose this path, just like I always have. Every decision I have ever made has been exceedingly deliberate, and now I sit on a massive frozen wall. Call it self punishment, or craziness, if you want to, but I prefer the phrase 'long-term stress-induced meditation.' You don't know a damn thing about stress until you've walked a day in my boots, but all of my shit has made me real peaceful. At least, relatively speaking. The Lord and every supervisor I've ever had at a Wall has known that the closer to the top I am, the less fights I get into. But just because I get into less fights doesn't mean I've stopped fighting. Once a warrior, always a warrior. Especially when I have to pass a few hundred ungrateful douchebags on my way from the top to my tiny-ass room.

I had just about made it through the dinner line when one of these princesses reared their smelly head. He just marched on up, cutting me and the two hundred men in line behind me off, and snatched the last decent looking apple on the whole damn food line.

"You might wanna put that down and go find your real place in line, friend." I stated calmly. I couldn't help myself, this dude was asking to get laid out, and I was asking very politely for his permission.

"'Scuse me, bitch. Didn't see yo whiny ass in my way. I spent all fuckin day up on toppa that thing, and I will damn well take whatever I wanna." He spat out. And with that, he began to turn away.

"I don't think you were listening. Put your tray down and walk to the back of the line." I put a hand on his tray, unyielding but not quite forceful, and I think he started to finally figure out that I meant business. He dropped his tray, letting it clatter to the ground, all his food and ration cards spilling to the ground. The noise was deafening in the now silent mess hall. Like most men that dared to work on the top of the wall, he was a big ass dude with a cruel and unforgiving demeanor. I came up to his nose, and he weighed a solid fifty pounds more than me, but I knew I had a few solid advantages over this asshole. He may pack a mean, slow punch, but I pack a quick, calculating and effective everything. Years of training in hand-to-hand combat, including multiple kinds of martial arts, participation in countless sports, and plenty real-time fighting experience, all at my fingertips just waiting to be put to work.

He threw the first punch, of course. I dodged underneath his arm and started jabbing fast and deep punches into his right kidney. He grabbed his side with a loud yell of surprise, and I knew I had done at least enough damage to slow his dominant side. When he came at me the second time, intending to grab me by around my face, I redirected his hand away from me and let a roundhouse kick fly, slamming into his jaw at a sufficient speed to send him collapsing into the counter and then into the mess of his own tray. I resisted the urge to find more people to fight, or to just beat this guy till he could barely move. Instead, I grabbed my tray, payed my ration tickets, and picked up the fairly unscathed apple next to the man's face.

"Thanks for your cooperation... and the apple, princess." I said with a smirk to myself. I may be a little rusty these days, but not so bad that people stop taking me seriously. Just, not too seriously. No one needs to know who I am or where I got that sort of game from, all they need is to not fuck with me.

I flexed my left hand experimentally, then did a small stretch with the entire arm, not realizing that I had been using my left arm to fight with. Gingerly opening the door and squeezing myself and my tray of food through the small port hole, I leaned against the wall as the door's own weight shut itself.

Usually, I had enough control to use my right arm in fights, and now I was feeling the consequences of not only bad preparation, but bad awareness. Stripping off all my outer layers, I fashioned myself a sling and slapped an ice pack onto part of my heavily scarred shoulder. With both the old injury and the fact that I hadn't been keeping my arm in the best of shape, and I knew I would pay for my lack of readiness for the next week or so at the top of the Wall. Heaving myself onto my bed, a cot with wool blankets and a makeshift pillow, I stared up at the ceiling, willing the memories away. My dreams would be haunted tonight. No matter how high you climb or how cold it gets, you can never forget the last moments of a Drift gone terribly wrong.

I will never escape those feelings of death and terror.

* * *

AN: I super appreciate all the reviews and follows! To my reviewer narutofanfiction who asked about POV, I will be switching between just a few first person views and some third person. I want to tell the story to it's fullest extent, and I feel like we can connect more with the characters in first person and really enjoy other parts of the plot from third person (that's one of the awesome parts about writing fanfics). Right now I'm just doing deeper character development and putting little bits of plot into play before we really get into the good stuff!

Don't be afraid to tell me what you do or do not want to see!


End file.
